A BELOW strength Malmesbury side failed to produce a performance good enough to start the season with a win.

At home to Rockhampton they only had three runs on the board when their second wicket fell.

Phil Cavey steadied the ship with 42 runs off 95 balls and Jeremy Newman and James Pearce-Smith chipped in with 29 each.

But at 151-9 Malmesbury had left the door open for Rockhampton to close in on a victory, which they did with 2.4 overs to spare to win by four wickets.

Captain Ed Shellard, who was out for nought, said many of the batsmen moaned about the length of the outfield but said the pitch is better than it has been in years.

"The pitch has got a bit more bounce and pace in it and I suppose we are not used to that yet. Apparently their pitch is very similar so they coped better than we did."

Shellard said it was a game of missed opportunities for Malmesbury.

"Three of our batsmen came in and said we should have attacked their weaker bowler more. We should have just done that rather than coming in and telling me. We didn't push singles may be because we have an older side but we should have gone for it when the younger lads went in.

"They were a younger and fitter side but I definitely think there was 175 in that pitch and somewhere we missed out on those 25 runs. We dropped three catches, two of them coming at critical times because they would have put us back in the driving seat. They probably had it under control. If we had got their number three out, who scored 65, then I think we would have been okay. It was a mixture of rustiness and not scoring enough."

Shellard is hoping to bring in Glyn Rees-Jones and new signing Rich Jefferson to inject some youth and runs for next week's trip to Biddestone. He said: "If everyone is back we will be in a better position to go for it."

Biddestone will go into the game against Malmesbury without having played a league game.

But captain Kris Boulton does not believe this will affect his side as a number of his side played in the victory over Potterne in the National Village Knockout Cup on Sunday.

"It was disappointing to have the game against Woodmancote abandoned but they had no covers and there was three heavy showers leaving us no chance of starting play before the 3.30pm cut-off point.

"But we have had two competitive friendlies against Corsham and Chippenham so that should help us."

Boulton is not underestimating Malmesbury. He said: "We lost to them heavily last year which signalled the start of our bad patch of the season so we will be looking to set the record straight.

"We will have much the same team as last week with Alan Low the only player missing due to his rugby commitments."